REST ASSURED

I have worked at Rest Assured Funeral Home & Crematory for eleven years.

Yes.

Rest Assured.

I didn't name the muthafucka,

I told Gerald years ago it sounded less like a funeral home and more like something a serial killer whispers before closing the trunk.

Rest assured.

CLUNK.

Now you're in the trunk wondering why you didn't just mind your business.

Gerald disagreed.

Gerald was also white.

That matters later.

Not because Gerald was racist or anything. Nothing like that. Gerald was actually a very nice man.

He just possessed a particular level of curiosity that I have personally only witnessed in white people in horror movies.

You know exactly what I'm talking about.

A noise comes from the basement at 2:12 in the morning.

Black people:

Well, I guess we don't have a basement anymore.

White people:

Hello?

HELLO?!

Baby, who the fuck are you announcing yourself to?

Then they grab a flashlight with 11% battery and walk downstairs barefoot.

Not me.

If my basement whispers my name, whatever is down there owns the house now. I'll send the mortgage company its forwarding address.

Anyway.

Gerald had that horror-movie curiosity.

I did not.

Which is why what happened Thursday night pissed me off more than it scared me.

At first.

Because I followed every horror-movie survival rule.

I minded my business.

I didn't investigate mysterious noises.

I didn't read Latin out of an old book.

I didn't buy an antique doll with human-looking eyes.

I didn't move into a house where six people had been murdered because the price was unbelievable.

That's why.

And if anybody had whispered Celeste from a dark hallway, my ass would've been in the parking lot before they got to the second syllable.

I followed the rules.

The dead cheated.

Her name was Amaya Brooks.

She was eight years old.

And before you ask yes.

Children are different.

You don't work in a funeral home for eleven years without learning how to put certain things somewhere in your mind and lock the door.

Ninety-two years old. Six grandchildren. Fourteen great-grandchildren. Married sixty-eight years.

That's a life.

You can find some peace in that.

Eight years old?

There isn't a damn thing peaceful about choosing which school picture should appear before the words FOREVER IN OUR HEARTS.

Amaya's mother gave us forty-seven files for her memorial video.

I know because I counted them.

Twice.

Forty-seven.

Remember that number.

Because apparently somebody or something at Rest Assured couldn't fucking count.

Most were pictures.

Amaya missing her two front teeth.

Amaya wearing a princess crown.

Amaya asleep with a puppy sprawled across her chest.

There was a little video of her dancing in somebody's kitchen while a woman probably Grandman laughed so hard behind the camera she couldn't hold the phone straight.

I watched that one twice.

Then I wished I hadn't.

Kids are different.

That's all I'm going to say.

Gerald left around nine.

The embalmer left at ten.

By 11:30, it was just me, Amaya, and approximately six other people who weren't paying taxes anymore.

I had my headphones on, half a turkey sandwich beside me, and exactly enough patience left to finish that video before midnight.

I inserted the family's flash drive.

47 FILES RECEIVED.

Good.

I dragged the folder into our memorial software.

The progress bar crawled across the screen.

Then:

48 FILES IMPORTED.

I frowned.

“No.”

I checked the flash drive.

Forty-seven.

I checked the computer.

Forty-eight.

Now, I have worked with technology long enough to understand that sometimes computers simply decide they hate you.

I wasn't scared.

I was irritated.

There is a difference.

I opened the imported folder.

At the bottom sat a file I had never seen.

No thumbnail.

No extension.

No creation date.

No file size.

Nothing except a title.

PLAY ME LAST

I stared at it.

“No.”

See?

Survival instinct.

People in horror movies always want to investigate shit.

What's that noise in the attic?

I don't know.

Stay your ass downstairs.

This mysterious videotape says PLAY ME.

Then don't fucking play it.

Why are we struggling with this?

I deleted it.

Forty-seven.

Thank you.

I went back to work.

Three minutes later, the software froze.

Then refreshed.

48 FILES IMPORTED.

I stopped chewing.

Scrolled down.

PLAY ME LAST

“Awww Hell Naw!!”

I deleted it again.

Emptied the recycle bin too, because apparently this file and I needed boundaries.

Forty-seven.

I unplugged the flash drive.

Forty-seven.

Closed the program.

Opened it again.

48 FILES IMPORTED.

I leaned back.

“This is some Gerald shit.”

Because Gerald?

Gerald would've clicked it the first time.

Probably would've turned the lights off first to “get the full experience.”

I had sense.

I deleted it.

Again.

It came back.

I right-clicked it.

No properties.

No location.

According to the computer, the file did not exist.

According to my eyeballs, that bitch was sitting right there.

PLAY ME LAST

Now, before anybody starts judging what happened next, understand something.

I had deleted it three times.

Emptied the recycle bin.

Removed the flash drive.

Restarted the program.

At some point, curiosity stops being stupidity and becomes an investigation.

That's what I told myself.

It was still stupidity.

I clicked it.

The screen went black.

Static crackled through my headphones.

I yanked them off.

Then the picture appeared.

My office.

I looked at the screen.

Then around the room.

Then back at the screen.

Same desk.

Same ugly beige wall.

Same half-dead plant Gerald bought me for Administrative Professionals Day three years ago.

Same framed sign behind my chair:

REST ASSURED. YOU'RE IN CARING HANDS.

“Okay…”

The camera angle was behind me.

High in the corner.

I slowly turned around.

There was no camera.

There had never been a camera.

I looked back at the monitor.

There I was.

Sitting at my computer.

I raised my right hand.

The woman on the screen didn't.

Every hair on my arms stood up.

“Nope.”

I reached for the mouse.

The door opened.

Not my actual door.

The door inside the video.

I looked at mine.

Closed.

Back at the monitor.

A little girl walked into my office.

Pink barrettes.

Purple pajamas.

One sock.

I knew that face.

Of course I knew that face.

I'd spent the last three hours arranging forty-seven pictures of it into a memorial video.

Amaya Brooks.

My eyes drifted toward the wall separating my office from Viewing Room A.

Amaya was lying in there.

Her service was at ten in the morning.

On my monitor, she walked behind the version of me sitting at the desk.

Video-Me didn't react.

Amaya looked directly into the camera.

Then somehow, I can't explain this she looked past it.

At me.

Not Video-Me.

Me.

She stepped closer.

Her lips moved.

The speakers were barely loud enough for me to hear her.

“That's not me in the casket.”

I didn't move.

Didn't blink.

Didn't breathe.

And for once in my forty-six years on God's green earth, I didn't have shit to say.

The video ended.

00:00

I stared at the screen.

Then I laughed.

Not because anything was funny.

My brain had apparently reached the portion of the evening where insanity became an acceptable coping mechanism.

“No.”

I grabbed my phone and called Gerald.

He answered on the fifth ring.

“Celeste?”

“Who is in the Brooks casket?”

Silence.

Not sleepy confusion.

Silence.

That distinction matters.

“Celeste, what?”

“Who. Is. In. The. Brooks. Casket?”

“Amaya Brooks.”

“See, that would've sounded a whole lot better if you hadn't taken four business days to answer.”

“What are you doing?”

“I was making the memorial video.”

Another pause.

“Was?”

There it was again.

Not Why are you asking me this?

Not Are you okay?

Was?

I stood.

“Gerald.”

“Don't go into the viewing room.”

Everything inside me went cold.

I hadn't told him I was going anywhere.

“Why?”

“Celeste, listen to me. Stay in your office. I'm coming back.”

“Why can't I go into the viewing room?”

“Because I said so.”

Now.

Gerald had known me eleven years.

He should've known better.

“Gerald, I don't even listen to men I'm sleeping with. What makes you think your ass has authority?”

“CELESTE.”

I hung up.

Was that wise?

Probably not.

But we were past wise.

I opened my office door.

The hallway was dark except for the emergency lights near the floor.

Viewing Room A was thirty feet away.

I'd walked that hallway thousands of times.

That night, somebody had apparently stretched the motherfucker.

I reached the door.

My hand hovered over the handle.

My phone vibrated.

I looked down.

A text.

No number.

No sender.

One video attachment.

PLAY ME SECOND

“Bitch, fuck you.”

I should've stopped.

You know that.

I know that.

God knew that.

But if something dead has already learned how to text you, we're well past blocking the number.

I opened it.

Viewing Room A appeared on my screen.

Another impossible camera angle.

Amaya's white casket sat beneath soft recessed lights surrounded by pink and lavender flowers.

The room was empty.

Then someone entered the frame.

Me.

Video-Me walked toward the casket.

She reached for the lid.

Before her fingers touched it

BANG.

Something slammed against the inside.

I dropped my phone.

From the other side of the real door came:

BANG.

I backed away.

Another.

BANG.

Then

BANG. BANG. BANG.

“I Know You Fuckin Lyin.”

I ran.

Judge me if you want.

I had forty-six good years and intended to see forty-seven.

I made it halfway back to my office before every monitor in the hallway flickered on.

They normally displayed service schedules.

Not anymore.

Faces appeared.

An old man.

A woman wearing a blue church hat.

A teenage boy.

Another woman.

Another man.

Faces I recognized.

People whose funerals we'd handled.

People whose memorial videos I had made.

The old man spoke first.

“That wasn't me.”

The woman in the church hat followed.

“That wasn't me.”

The teenager.

“That wasn't me.”

One after another.

“That wasn't me.”

“That wasn't me.”

“That wasn't me.”

I covered my ears.

“STOP!”

Every screen went black.

Then white letters appeared.

ASK GERALD ABOUT THE LOWER LEVEL.

I stared at them.

“We don't have a lower level.”

A voice behind me said:

“Yes, we do.”

I screamed so hard I may have briefly joined the soprano section of Heaven.

"You son of a bitch"

Gerald stood at the end of the hallway.

Coat over pajamas.

One shoe untied.

And he looked terrified.

Not of the monitors.

Of me.

“You watched it,” he said.

“Apparently I watched several things I wasn't supposed to.”

“Celeste”

“What is downstairs?”

He closed his eyes.

That irritated me more than anything.

“Open your fucking eyes when you're lying to me.”

“My father built this place.”

“I know.”

“There used to be another preparation level beneath the crematory.”

“Used to be?”

“We sealed it.”

“Why?”

His eyes moved toward Viewing Room A.

The banging had stopped.

“My father called it preservation.”

I laughed once.

“Gerald, if the next words out of your mouth are some Get Out shit, I'm leaving you here with these people.”

“He believed a person left something behind after death.”

“Yeah. A body.”

“Not the body. A signal.”

I stopped.

“He started recording it in 1989,” Gerald said. “Electrical activity. Sound frequencies. Things he couldn't explain. He said death wasn't silence.”

Gerald looked toward the monitors.

“He said it was transmission.”

My mouth went dry.

“All those people?”

“He kept the equipment running.”

“Why are they saying that's not them?”

Gerald didn't answer.

I stepped closer.

“Why are they saying that's not them?”

“Because eventually my father stopped believing the body mattered.”

My stomach turned.

“What did he do?”

“He cremated them.”

I stared at him.

“Families who paid for burials?”

“Yes.”

“Then what the hell did y'all bury?”

“Unclaimed remains. Sometimes weighted forms. Whatever he could use.”

For a second, I couldn't process what he'd said.

Then I slapped him.

Hard.

Eleven years of employment flashed before my eyes.

Worth it.

“You buried strangers under people's names?”

“My father did.”

“And you?”

His face answered before his mouth could.

“Gerald.”

“I stopped it.”

“When?”

Nothing.

“WHEN?”

“Seven years ago.”

I'd worked there eleven.

Four years.

Four years of smiling at grieving families.

Four years of memorial videos.

Four years of watching mothers, husbands, daughters, and sons cry over caskets that might not have held the person they loved.

“Why?”

“Money at first,” Gerald whispered.“Caskets could be reused. Burial costs. Then the recordings started.”

“What recordings?”

“The dead.”

A monitor behind Gerald flickered.

Amaya appeared.

Gerald froze.

She wasn't looking at me.

She was looking at him.

“You didn't stop.”

Gerald's face drained.

“Jesus.”

Amaya shook her head.

“You just stopped burying us.”

The lights went out.

Gerald ran.

Not toward the front door.

Toward the crematory.

And because apparently all those horror-movie survival instincts I'd bragged about earlier had clocked out for the evening

I followed his ass.

The crematory door stood open.

Behind the retort was a section of wall I'd passed thousands of times.

Gerald shoved a metal shelving unit aside.

Behind it:

A door.

Of course there was a secret fucking door.

Because apparently Rest Assured had been built by Scooby-Doo villains.

Gerald disappeared down a staircase.

“Gerald!”

Nothing.

“Goddammit.”

I followed.

And don't start.

I can feel you judging me.

Yes, I had spent the entire evening talking shit about people who follow mysterious noises into basements.

Life comes at you fast.

Apparently so do consequences.

Somewhere, the version of me from three hours earlier was calling me a dumb bitch.

The smell hit first.

Not decomposition.

Burned plastic.

Dust.

Something electrical.

At the bottom was a room filled with equipment older than me.

Tape decks.

Monitors.

Reels.

Wires disappearing into walls.

And shelves.

Hundreds of tapes.

Names written across them.

Names I knew.

Then I noticed something newer.

A server rack.

Blinking green.

Connected directly to our memorial system upstairs.

“You digitized it.”

Gerald was crying.

“It digitized itself.”

Every monitor turned on.

Amaya.

The old man.

Church Hat.

The teenager.

Dozens more.

Then hundreds.

They spoke together.

Not screaming.

Screaming would've been easier.

They whispered.

“Rest assured.”

Again.

“Rest assured.”

Again.

“Rest assured.”

Gerald dropped to his knees.

“I tried to shut it down.”

The largest monitor flickered.

A new file appeared.

My office.

Tomorrow's date.

Then my photograph.

The one from my employee badge.

Underneath:

CELESTE WARREN

1979–2026

I stared at it.

“Oh, absolutely the fuck not.”

Gerald backed away from me.

That's when I understood.

The transmission wasn't predicting my death.

It wasn't showing the future.

It was asking for something.

New words appeared.

ONE BODY REMAINS UNACCOUNTED FOR.

Then...

RESTORE THE NAME.

I looked at Gerald.

Gerald looked toward the ceiling.

Toward the crematory above us.

And somehow I understood exactly whose body they wanted.

“No,” he whispered.

The monitors changed.

Every face disappeared except Amaya's.

She smiled.

Not the smile from the pictures her mother gave me.

This one was different.

Satisfied.

Upstairs, something heavy moved.

Then another.

Then another.

Casket lids.

Opening.

Gerald ran toward the stairs.

He made it three steps.

The basement door slammed.

I didn't touch him.

Didn't have to.

The lights went out.

Gerald screamed.

And whatever happened during those next thirty seconds is between Gerald, God, and several hundred extremely pissed-off dead people.

I minded my business.

See?

Survival instinct.

When the lights came back on, Gerald was gone.

So were the tapes.

So were the servers.

There was nothing in that basement except dust.

My phone buzzed.

One final video.

PLAY ME LAST

I stared at it.

“You've got some fucking nerve.”

I opened it.

Amaya stood in Viewing Room A.

Behind her was the casket.

Open.

Empty.

She looked into the camera.

“Thank you, Celeste.”

I swallowed.

“Baby, you're welcome, but please don't ever call me again.”

She smiled.

The screen went black.

The next morning, Amaya's mother arrived at ten.

I don't know how to explain what happened next.

Amaya was inside her casket.

Her mother identified her.

Held her hand.

Kissed her forehead.

It was her.

Actually her.

The other families weren't so lucky.

Over the next several weeks, graves were opened.

Some were empty.

Some contained strangers.

Some contained nothing but bags of sand.

Gerald was never found.

Neither was his father.

Rest Assured closed six months later.

I don't work in funeral services anymore.

I work from home now.

Insurance.

Boring as hell.

I love it.

Nobody is embalmed.

Nobody crawls out of anything.

The dead generally respect business hours.

Sometimes I still make memorial videos on the side for families who can't afford them.

I know.

I know.

But I'm good at it.

Last Friday, a woman sent me sixty-three pictures of her husband.

I downloaded the folder.

63 FILES RECEIVED.

I imported them.

64 FILES IMPORTED.

I stared at the screen for a long time.

Scrolled to the bottom.

No thumbnail.

No extension.

No date.

Just four words.

CELESTE, PLAY ME FIRST.

I closed the laptop.

Because apparently the dead had forgotten one very important thing about me.

I learn from my mistakes.

The laptop opened by itself.

The screen went black.

Static.

Then a man's voice came through the speakers.

Gerald.

“Celeste?”

I froze.

A pause.

Then he whispered....

“Rest assured.”